Herbert Spencer on Instinct and Intelligence: The Background of the “Cambridge Mind” January 3, 2016

In this post for the Grote Club, I reexamine Herbert Spencer’s discussion of a fundamental dispute in early psychology and intellectual history: the degree of difference between instinct and intelligence.

Simon Cook previously described the novel account of the human mind which emerged before the First World War- the Cambridge Mind. He considers the development of this conception of brain and behavior to be a critical moment in the early history of the social sciences in Britain, informing the views of both Alfred Marshall and W.H.R. Rivers, but to very different effects. From my vantage point of American intellectual history and history of science, I find a number elements of “the Cambridge Mind” interesting.